


what brings you home

by thingswhat



Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: (or at least references to/mentions of), Established Relationship, Family Feels, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Home, Honeymoon, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Canon, Trapped In Elevator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 10:09:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29873073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingswhat/pseuds/thingswhat
Summary: For Barnaby, there was nothing special about the concept of ‘home’, and no one special waiting for him there.Barnaby and what it means to come home, then and now.
Relationships: Barnaby "Bunny" Brooks Jr./Kaburagi T. Kotetsu
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	what brings you home

There was an art print Barnaby once saw in the window display of a kitschy, cluttered shop that read ‘Life takes you unexpected places, love brings you home’. It was a foolish, sentimental statement, cloying, and he knew better: there was no good or comfort that came from coming home. 

He’d learned the truth the hard way when he was only four, when pulling open the front door revealed a nightmare that haunted his every moment for the next twenty years. And he continued to learn it even once he was grown each time he returned to an echoing, empty apartment. Home meant being alone, meant solitude eased only by the white-bright glare of his computer in the dark as he sifted for fragmented clues about his parents’ murder in the debris of the internet, night after night.

He faintly remembered saying I’m back or I’m home when he returned to the house as a boy. He kept doing so out of habit, for a while, after. Then eventually he stopped. There was no need for it. What was the point? 

For Barnaby, there was nothing special about the concept of ‘home’, and no one special waiting for him there. Home was just a place to exist and get more work done until it was daylight again. 

**

Barnaby heard voices chattering and laughter even before he opened the front door, the sound only pausing as he stepped inside and said, “I’m home.”

“Welcome home,” two voices chorused in unison. Peeking back over the sofa, Kaede waved excitedly.

“Dad’s showing me your honeymoon photos!” Next to her, her father pursed his lips and made exaggerated smooch-faces at Barnaby until he got close enough to lean over the back of the couch and kiss him (briefly, though obviously a second too long according to Kaede’s standards for parental pda, considering the grossed-out ‘bleah’ noise she made.)

Wrapping his arms around Kotetsu’s neck, Barnaby bent down to rest his chin on his husband’s head. “Honeymoon photos, eh?” Placed on the coffee table before the pair, his laptop’s holoscreen displayed a slideshow, still switching from one picture to another to another. “Did your father show you the time he lost his wallet?”

Kotetsu flailed, “HEY,” and Kaede dissolved into giggles. Barnaby had taken no less than ten photographs of his (brand new) husband frantically slapping at his pockets while standing next to the resort’s brightly-colored bar, then another five zooming closer and closer in on the hand where Kotetsu was very obviously already holding it.

“Yeeeees!” she laughed, “I made him show me. And the one where the seagull stole his hat!”

Barnaby couldn’t help but smile while being jostled around as Kotetsu shook his fist. “Damned bird, I had to spend almost my entire minute of Hundred Power to get it back! And is this how it’s going to be now, you two ganging up on me all the time?” he complained.

“Yep!”

“Mm-hm.” Kaede and Barnaby grinned at each other after answering simultaneously, then fistbumped, while Kotetsu huffed.

Barnaby leaned down further to murmur into his husband’s ear, “The photos in the elevator…?”

“Not included!” Kotetsu shouted, then froze with a wide-eyed panicked look at Kaede’s curious expression. “The hotel’s elevator broke down, we were stuck inside, very boring, nothing happened, Bunny took photos for no reason, they turned out bad so I deleted them, next question!”

Waving her hands, Kaede crossed her arms in an X, yelling to be heard over her father’s babble, “Enough! Not asking, I do not want to know!” 

“Well good, because there’s nothing to ask about, and I wouldn’t tell you even if you did, because there’s nothing to tell.” Kotetsu crossed his arms and pouted, giving Barnaby a narrow-eyed glare out of the corner of his eye. 

Barnaby smiled back at him beatifically, radiating innocence. 

(He knew where to find those photos, and how to get them back even if Kotetsu had deleted them. And what else was he supposed to do when they’d gotten trapped together in an elevator for nearly two hours, after swearing to not use their powers if they could possibly help it since they were on _vacation_ , on their _honeymoon_. But the air in the elevator had gotten stuffy and uncomfortable and Kotetsu decided, as he was sometimes wont to do, he might as well take off his shirt. His golden tan skin had quickly started to shimmer as he sweat, and then a droplet had collected in the hollow between his collarbones, finally slowly trailing down in a glittering trail over Kotetsu’s pecs and over the muscles of his defined abs….

What was Barnaby supposed to do? It was his _honeymoon_ , after all. And anyway, they left that elevator in perfect condition when it finally resumed service, clothing straightened and tucked in, and hair smoothed down back into place—so if before then someone had gotten supremely wrecked by another someone, Barnaby needed souvenirs. Other than the ache in his jaw afterwards that had long since faded but that he still remembered fondly, and his recollection of the way his husband staggered as they stepped out into the lobby finally, gait unsteady until Barnaby wrapped his arm around the other man’s waist.)

Barnaby’s smile grew smug, and he hid it in his husband’s hair as he pressed a kiss to the top of his head. Kotetsu grumped, then clasped Barnaby’s hands where they still crossed over his chest, until they were hand in hand, hand in hand. And they stayed that way, Barnaby still embracing him from behind, as the three settled down again to watch the remainder of the photos in the slideshow in comfortable silence. 

*

Home, for Barnaby, meant being together with others. Home meant new family, meant friends, meant someone he loved more than he’d ever believed was even possible. Home meant clutter and noise and turning his computer off before sliding into bed with someone he could hold, someone who held him, who wrapped their arms around him and promised to never let him go. 

Love had brought him home.

*

Kotetsu came up behind him as Barnaby hung the framed art up on the wall and straightened it carefully. It was a simple piece, hand-done calligraphy he’d found on an artist’s website, delicately illustrated with a small sketch of a tiger and a rabbit tucked down near the artist’s signature, just as Barnaby requested. 

Peering at it closely, he nudged Barnaby’s shoulder gently with his own, “Kind of a sentimental saying, eh, Bunny?”

“It’s a good sentiment, though,” he answered. “It’s true.” Kotetsu hmmed, nodding. Leaning against him, Kotetsu wrapped an arm around his shoulders, and, arm sliding around his husband’s waist, Barnaby leaned back against him in return.

**Author's Note:**

> For the March Flash fiction day four prompt: Coming Home, and day five prompt: Trapped Together. Also posted at my tumblr, thingswhatareawesome.


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